**From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting
analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive
plan for revitalizing American education.
In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's
foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive
analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will
do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller
Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005,
when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an
unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The
state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing
schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into
charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of
American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation
and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent
studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled
their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit,
with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden,
Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland.
In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New
Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public
education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in
today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school
and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs,
and parental choice.
